y below them, at the people moving in the
gardens, at the children.

"I never dreamed it was like this," she said. "I never could picture it
before."

There was a longing in her face he'd never noticed before. He stared at
her, and she was different suddenly, and her thin muscular body was
different too.

Pioneer--that was the word he wanted.

The girls of the new race could never be pioneers.

"Look, Eric. Over there. Aircars."

The words broke in on his thoughts and he looked away from her,
following her gaze incuriously, not much interested. And then his
fingers stiffened on the controls and the peacefulness fell away from
him as if it had never been.

"Lots of them," she said.

Aircars. Eight or ten of them, more than he had ever seen at one time,
spread out in a line and flying eastward, straight toward him.

[Illustration]

They mustn't see Lisa. They mustn't get close enough to realize who he
was.

He swung away from them, perpendicular to their course, angling so that
he would be out of perception range, and then he circled, close to the
ground, as they swept by, undeviating, purposeful, toward the mountains.

_Toward the mountains._

Fear. Sudden, numbing fear and the realization of his own carelessness.

"What's the matter, Eric?"

He had swung about and now followed them, far behind them and off to one
side, much too far away for them to try to perceive him. Perhaps, he
thought, perhaps they don't know. But all the time he remembered his own
trips to the canyon, taken so openly.

"Oh, Eric, they're not--"

He swung up over the last ridge and looked down, and her words choked
off in her throat. Below them lay the canyon, and in it, the long line
of aircars, landed now, cutting off the gorge, the light reflecting off
them, bronze in the sunset. And the tiny figures of men were even now
spreading out from the cars.

"What'll we do, Eric?"

Panic. In her voice and in her eyes and in her fingers that bit into his
arm, hurting him, steadying him against his own fear and the twisting
realization of his betraying lack of caution.

"Run. What else can we do?"

Down back over the ridge, out of sight of the aircars and into the
foothills, and all the while knowing that there was nowhere to run to
now.

"No, Eric! We've got to go back. We've got to find Mag and Nell--" Her
voice rose in anguish, then broke, and she was crying.

"We can't help them by going back," he said harshly. "Maybe th